Kiss of a Demon King

'Abie?' Lanthe shrieked, charging for her, dropping to her knees beside her. 'No, no, no, Abie, don't die, don't die, don't die!' The air around them heated and blurred.

Whereas Sabine had her illusions, Lanthe's innate sorcery was called persuasion. She could order any being to do as she pleased, but she rarely gave commands- they often ended in tragedy.

Yet when the males rounded on her, Lanthe's eyes began to glitter, sparkling like metal. The terrible power she'd feared to use she now wielded over them, without mercy. 'Do not move . . . Stab yourself. . . Fight each other to the death.'

The room was heavy with sorcery, and the abbey began groaning all around them. One of the stained glass windows shattered. Lanthe told the boy to jump through it-and not to use his wings on the way down. Eyes wild with confusion, he obeyed, the thick glass slashing over his skin. He never yelled as he plummeted to the valley floor.

When all were killed, Lanthe knelt beside Abie again.

'Live, Abie! Heal!' Gods, Lanthe was pushing, trying to command her. But it was too late. Sabine's heart no longer beat. Her eyes were blank with death.

'Don't leave me!' Lanthe screamed, pushing harder, harder . . . The furniture began to shake, their parents' bed rattling... More shifting ... a thud as a head rolled to the floor. Then a second one.

The power was unimaginable. And some­how, Sabine felt her body restoring itself. She blinked open her eyes, alive and even stronger than before.

'They ran from that place, out into the world, and never looked back,' she told her enthralled audience. 'All that Sabine would have from that night was the scar around her neck, a tale to tell, and the blood ven­detta of a Vrekener boy who'd somehow survived his fall....'

Lost in thought, Sabine absently realized that the guard had awakened and was squirming under her boot heels. She reached down and snapped his neck before she got so caught up with the story that she forgot to doit.

One woman clapped her hands in glee. Another breathed, 'God bless 'n keep you, miss.'

Sabine might as well be an agent of fate for these people on this eve. Not an agent for good, nor for bad. Just serving fate-which could be either.

After all, the next guard hired might be worse to them.

'What about the second time she died?' a brazen female asked. Her head was shaved bald.

'She was fighting to defend Melanthe and herself from yet another Vrekener attack. They captured Sabine, then flew her to a height, dropping her to a cobblestone street. Yet her sister was there once more to heal her broken body, to snatch her from the arms of death.'

As if it had happened yesterday, Sabine could still recall the sound of her skull cracking. That one had been so close. . . .

'The third time, they chased her into a raging river. The poor girl couldn't swim, and she drowned-'

'Then take it, you bitch!' a woman shrieked from downstairs, interrupting the flow of the story once more. Ah, the Queen of Silent Tongues was yielding to

Lanthe.

Sabine's skin prickled as the air began to sizzle with power. The sorceress jailed downstairs was surrendering her root ability. Lanthe would be able to talk telepathi-cally to whomever she addressed, within a certain dis- tance.

'No, don't fret,' Sabine told her antsy humans. 'Have you read any of the halfpenny novels, the ones with bank robberies? That's all my accomplice is doing now. Except she's stealing something equivalent'-she made her voice dramatic-'to your soul!'

At that one woman began crying, which pleased Sabine because it reminded her why she so rarely took humans as pets.

'Who killed her the next time?' Brazen Mortal asked. 'Vrekeners?'

'No. It was other Sorceri bent on stealing her goddesslike power. They poisoned her.' The Sorceri so adore their poisons, she thought bitterly. But then she frowned at the memories. 'It did things to the young girl's mind, this repeated dying. Like an arrowhead forged in fire, she was made sharp and deadly from con­stant pressure and blows. And she began to covet life as no other before her. Whenever she felt hers was in danger, a mindless fury swept through her, the need to lash out undeniable.'

When some of their eyes widened, Sabine realized her pensiveness had made the cell appear to be choked with mist. She often unwittingly displayed illusions that mirrored her thoughts and emotions, even when dreaming.

As she swiftly cleared the air, another patient said, 'Good miss, wh-what happened after the poisoning?'

'The sisters just wanted to survive, to be left alone, to amass a fortune in gold through just a bit of sorcery. Was that too much to ask?' She gave them an 'hon­estly ?' look.

'But the Vrekeners were unrelenting, tracking them by the girls' sorcery. Especially the boy. Because he hadn't reached his immortality by the time he made that leap, he didn't regenerate. He'd been broken, scarred and deformed from his injuries forever.'

They'd since learned his name was Thronos and that he was the son of the Vrekener Sabine had beheaded all those years ago. 'Without the use of sorcery, the girls wer-e starving. Sabine was now sixteen and old enough to begin doing what any girl like her would.'

Brazen Mortal crossed her arms over her chest and knowingly said, 'Prostitution.'

'Wrong. Commercial fishing.'

'Really?'

'Noooo,' Sabine said. 'Fortune-telling. Which promptly earned her a death sentence for being a witch.'

She fingered the white streak in her red hair, the one she hid from others with an illusion. 'They didn't always burn witches at stakes. That's a fallacy. No, sometimes a village had burned its quota, so they killed secretly, burying a group alive.' Her tone grew soft. 'Can you imagine what it was like for the girl to breathe earth? To feel it compacting in her lungs?'

She gazed over her silent audience. Their eyes had gone wide-she could hear a pin drop.

'The humans expired quickly, but not so for Sabine,' she continued. 'The girl withstood the reaper's call for as long as she could, but felt herself fading. Yet then she heard a ringing voice from above, commanding her to live and to rise from her grave. So Sabine mind­lessly obeyed, digging against others' dead flesh, blindly stretching, desperate for another inch closer to the surface.'

From behind them, Lanthe's voice intoned, 'At last, Sabine's hand shot up from the muddy ground, pale and clenched. Finally, Melanthe could find her sister. As she hauled Sabine out of her grave, lightning struck all around and hail pelted them-like the earth was angry to lose her catch. Since that fateful night, Sabine doesn't care about anything.'

Sabine sighed. 'It's not true that she doesn't care about anything. She cares about nothing very much.'

Lanthe glared, her eyes shimmering a metallic blue from her recent infusion of power.

'How amusing, Sabine,' she said, laying the words directly into Sabine's mind.

Sabine jumped. 'Telepathy. Outstanding. Try to retain it.' Gods, she was relieved to see Lanthe acquire another power. Her sister's persuasion had been exhausted keep­ing Sabine alive.

It seemed that all those deaths had made Sabine even more powerful while weakening Lanthe-in both ability and resilience.

'That sorceress also had the power to talk to animals,' Lanthe continued. 'Guess what you're getting for your birthday!'

'Oh, bully.' One of the least sought powers of all Sorceri. The problem with communicating with ani­mals was that there were rarely enough within earshot to be helpful. 'I can only hope a plague of locusts is milling about when 1 need them.' To her audience, Sabine said, 'We're finished here.'